The chickens are on a roll when it comes to eggs right now. There have been one or two a day - a good amount for pekin bantams like the ones I have. They're not the most consistent of layers so every egg is valued (and tasty too!) But one day I went out and put my hand in to take out an egg when it felt... well, weird. Soft, but not like a soft boiled egg. It had the form of an egg but was squashy to touch. There was a membrane but no shell.
In her book, Chicken Breeds and Care, Frances Bassom writes: "They look like normal eggs, but when you pick them up you find that there is no strong shell surrounding them, just a transparent membrane that is easily broken."
Her advice is to make sure hens are getting enough dietary calcium. My hens have a tray filled with mixed grit, which includes calcium, so presumably somebody had been missing out on this. Since then there have been no more soft eggs.
I've also come across two super tiny eggs in the past few months. In the picture above, the 'large' eggs are actually bantam eggs and the two small ones are 'wind eggs'.
I assumed the first had been laid by Mabel as she had been in the nest box around that time and wondered if this was something hens did at the end of the laying career, as well as at the start. But Mabel subsequently revealed a normal egg so was obviously not the culprit. Another tiny egg was laid a few days later.
I suspect Matilda, the smallest of the hens.
Little Ava also laid two wind eggs before deciding that egg laying was not her true vocation in life. https://cosycottageandthequestforthegoodlife.wordpress.com/2019/06/11/the-mystery-of-the-pixie-egg/
Frances Bassom explains that young hens "occasionally lay very tiny 'wind eggs'. They can frequently be as small as a marble and usually have no yolk."
She adds: "They are the result of a small leak of albumen into the oviduct. The egg-producing mechanism responds by covering it with a shell."
Once hens start laying properly, these tiny eggs are rarely found.
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